With the same smooth e-mail capabilities and IT-department management flexibility that have made BlackBerrys famous, the Bold connects to both corporate and personal servers, aggregating several accounts. The device will show full HTML e-mail messages as long as your server is upgraded to handle HTML, which is something IT departments can do for corporate installations. For individuals using their wireless carriers' BlackBerry setups, it's slated to roll out later this year.

But the Bold takes a big step forward as a mobile office: This is the first RIM device I've seen that comes with the ability to edit Microsoft Office documents, thanks to the included DataViz DocumentsToGo for BlackBerry. The integrated version displays Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents and lets you make some basic edits. You get formatting, including Word tables and graphics, but not embedded graphics or charts in Excel. Even better, you can cut, copy, and paste text between apps, unlike on the iPhone. Paying $69.99 for the Premium version buys the ability to create new documents, add advanced formatting in Word and Excel, and add new slides to PowerPoint presentations. The program is elegant enough to banish Dynoplex eOffice to the dungeon forever.

I'm hoping the Bold's Web browser will improve with time, because this version seems unfinished. As with most modern mobile browsers, the Bold displays complete, desktop-style Web pages, letting you zoom in to magnify different areas of the page. But my Bold kept getting tripped up by advertising-related JavaScripts, making page loads slow. Turning off Java sped things up a bit, but it also disabled some page features.

Some fonts rendered oddly, radio buttons were sometimes missing, and JavaScript pop-up controls worked only part of the time. There's also an irritating bug that forces you to zoom in to press many button controlseven though you don't have to zoom in to click on links or enter text into text boxes. I preferred using the free Opera Mini 4.1, which works well on the Bold. To its credit, RIM has said that all of these issues will be addressed in the future by free browser updates, so maybe we'll see some fixes by the time AT&T's version of the phone is released. Also, Rogers doesn't include a mainstream instant-messaging app, only the lame BlackBerry Messenger.

On the bright side, there are plenty of third-party applications available, but RIM and Rogers don't have a portal for them that's as clear or as easy as Apple's App Store for the iPhone. Along with Opera Mini, I installed Mail for Google and Facebook, both of which worked well on the Bold.

The Bold has both Wi-Fi and GPS radios. The phone comes with the free BlackBerry Maps with GPS, which was able to grab my location as soon as I was standing outside (among low buildings), and a moving red dot on the map tracked me. Unlike many other phones, the Bold's GPS doesn't fall back to cell tower or Wi-Fi triangulation when you're inside or on a narrow street surrounded by tall buildings where you can't get a satellite fix. The app gives driving directions, but for voice prompts, you have to sign up for Rogers's $10-a-month TeleNav service.

Rogers includes five games: the good ol' BrickBreaker (which has been on BlackBerrys for years), Word Mole, a word-finding puzzle game; poker, Sudoku, and solitaire.next: Bold Music, Bold Photos, Bold Video

PCMag.com's lead mobile analyst, Sascha Segan, has reviewed hundreds of smartphones, tablets and other gadgets in more than 9 years with PCMag. He's the head of our Fastest Mobile Networks project, one of the hosts...

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